The Lightning Algorithm - Numberphile

Matt Henderson is making lightning in mazes.
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NUMBERPHILE

Videos by Brady Haran

[Pulsar]

Back in the day when we needed screen savers, this would've been really nice.

[onion]

"This was done in Mathematica" - I was half-expecting the code to be something like PlotLightning2D[100, 100] given how extensive Mathematica's libraries are :)

[hawsroy]

this looks like it should be in a science museum somewhere in high detail on a huge wall, accompanied by huge flashes. i’d pay to see that

[wouterlahousse]

Just watching numberphile not to miss out on the cat and dog cameos

[Arctic_Narwhal]

Animations of search algorithms are always so fun to watch

[florianlipp]

the effect of different values for p and q would have been interesting.
Higher q values in particular might lead to more twisted paths, detours (going back up for some time) etc.

[chris]

I'd love to see a version with hexagon-tiling.

[greatquux]

Perhaps a “tie” in the real world leads to forked lightning

[ciscoortega]

This looks amazing! Such simple ideas but the combination of them together is absolutely brilliant!

[PW_Thorn]

To improve this algorithm (generating random map), instead of generating randomly a new map in case it is not solvable, you can just add holes, level by level, randomly. It will then end solvable in a deterministic way instead of crossing finger to avoid that bad luck appears continuously. And we can notice that a randomly generated map with random holes added is still a random map !

[elraviv]

there is an algorithm to generate solvable mazes. you add random length lines one by one vertically and horizontally, but they can connect to other lines only at one point. so basically there are no blocking lines but the way around them can be long.

[sunongral]

I can't hardly explain how satisfying I find the animation! With that little sound! I'm a simple person, I see lighting and I'm hooked for as long as physically possible.

[penny]

I can only assume CGP is somewhere screaming: "make them hexagons, not squares!"

[krakenwarrior]

They could have called this the "Following the Droplet Down the Car Window as a Child" Algorithm, but I guess it doesn't have the same ring to it.

[Veptis]

Learned about this guy through twitter. After I followed I searched for any features on Numberphile. And there were some in my watch later. Glad I am here now.

Making beautiful maths visualizations is really something outstanding and that is the only piece that is missing from some of the lectures I have.

Therefore for anything I present or teach - having a beautiful visualisation is something I strife for.

[TheOcram]

I'm a chemist and this is fairly accurate actually. The electrical charge has to pick the oxygen molecules with the proper alignment of their double bonds (pi orbital) to create ozone and still reach the ground ASAP

[yobgodababua]

I'm surprised there was no mention of how A* (The king of pathfinding) basically combines naiive breadth-first with an arbitrary "fitness metric" (just like you used here to color the wavefront) to guide the selection of which border nodes to search next.

[strangeWaters]

I wonder if the lightning strikes end up normally distributed along the bottom

[mceajc]

Brady, I didn't even know how much I was missing hearing you speak to experts in their field until this moment. Thank you!

[python-programming]

I love lightning and I love numbers, so this is basically my new jam.